Sometimes you get...

...what you want/need.

This afternoon, I was scheduled to give a tour to a prospective student. (These can be good or bad. I've given tours to really interested people, who had lots of good questions, whose parents seemed impressed by everything, and I've also given tours to people who seemed spectacularly uninterested, and who had parents that asked questions of a nature that led me to speculate that they'd be helicopter parents).

I really wasn't mad about the idea of giving a tour. First of all: for most of both Wednesday and yesterday's evenings, I was grading papers. I'm TIRED. Grading makes me tired in a way few things can. And second, I woke up in the middle of the night (I had to put my furnace on for the first "overnight" last night) and was coughing like crazy (Gas heat does that to me, at least for the first few days) and now my upper back hurts from the coughing.

And I have to go grocery shopping. (Though this afternoon - seeing as today is payday - is probably not the best day to do it, but still). And if I want to avoid having my house egged Saturday night, I have to go buy some candy. I don't know why I had kept putting it off (getting Halloween candy), I guess it was one of those "meh, I'm busy, I don't want to think about it" things. (They do trick-or-treating Saturday night here. I suppose because Sunday is a school night, and also, a lot of churches do stuff on Sunday night. My church is having a hayride for the kids and any adults who want to come, but I think with my allergies, I'm best sitting that one out).

Anyway, I came in this morning to a message from the secretary (who is retiring in January and we all wonder how we're going to manage without her. Oh, there will be a "replacement," but I don't think whoever it is will adequately replace her).

The student canceled. So I'm off the hook. After I walk out of my last class at noon, I'm done for the day.

I think I'm actually going to go to Sherman, to a larger nicer grocery than the ones in town here. And maybe go to the Target. Yes, I know, it's payday - but somehow, in a larger area, places are less mobbed on payday than they are here.

So anyway. I might even go out for lunch. I think I need a few hours to blow the cobwebs out after this week.

***

I do have to write an exam for next week, though. I am going to start that in a few minutes. (It never stops).

***

I think I've got most of my Christmas shopping lined up. (And I started the second pair of fingerless mitts last night, in the short time between finishing the exams and deciding I had to go to bed).

Lots of people are getting tea from various tea-purveyors. But I like giving tea as a gift. For one thing, people who like tea (most of my family) appreciate it. And it gets used up. And almost any kind of "restricted" diet allows tea (unless you are absolutely, positively disallowed caffeine). And you can share it - I try to give food-gifts to the extended family, where I don't know how many of my cousins will be present for Christmas, so they can all share in the gift. (For my two uncles and their families, I am getting gift baskets from Bigelow - they do one that features the "only tea grown in the U.S." (there is a tea plantation in one of the Carolinas). I think that's kind of cool, and I think they'll appreciate it. It also comes with boxes of benne seed wafers and similar regional treats)

I'm also going to use the Vermont Country Store, as they have a number of unusual things (like Ribena, a blackcurrant syrup you can use to make drinks with) that I think some of my friends and family will like.

And I'm ordering a box of these to give out to my immediate family. The "Lucky Penny Man" - a little marzipan figure with a fake gold coin clenched between his set of nether-cheeks. It's allegedly an old German custom, but I've never heard of it. But I can already hear my brother laughing over it.

Apparently the idea is that you're wishing people such a prosperous year in the coming year that they have money coming out of - um, bodily orifices.

But like I said: I can already hear my brother (and my sister-in-law) laughing over it, so I feel like I have to buy them. (Even if I'm the only one in the family who actually likes marzipan.)

The funny thing is, the other night when my dad called me, he remarked, "I'm going to need a list from you for Christmas" and I was kind of "Uh...buh..." I guess I'd been thinking so much and having so much fun trying to figure out what to get people, that I hadn't started to think about what I wanted.